By TRACY JOHNSON, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, March 9, 2008

When Patrick Sanders was shot dead along a South Seattle street in 2001, his stunned younger sister was left to identify the body and hope each day that the killer would be caught.

Five years later, it looked like that finally happened. Police built a case against a man who'd since gone to prison for shooting someone else. They had gun evidence. An eyewitness. Even DNA.

King County prosecutors charged Conjewel Glover with first-degree murder -- yet now, more than a year and a half later, what seemed like an ironclad case has fallen apart.

"We were there. We were done. He was charged. He was going to jail," Andrea Sanders said. "In a million years, I never thought it would go like it did. ... Five years of my life, and we're back at square one."

Prosecutors dropped the case Feb. 7, a few days before Glover's trial. They can file it again if they can ever prove that Glover killed Sanders -- or, a scenario they consider just as likely -- that another man did.

The rare dismissal provides a look at how even the most painstakingly built murder case still can be fragile.

Glover's attorneys credited the Prosecutor's Office for doing the right thing after they said they "uncovered significant problems with the state's case."

"Like Mr. Glover and his family, we are tremendously relieved by his release," public defenders Avi Lipman and Colette Tvedt told the Seattle P-I in a statement. "From the beginning of this case until its dismissal, Mr. Glover maintained his innocence."

Yet investigators are nowhere near ruling him out. They say that because Glover, now 33, and another man -- a convicted murderer -- were with Patrick Sanders the night he was killed, one crucial question has the case at a standstill:

Which one of them did it?

Big break: DNA

At 28, Sanders was a fun-loving, entrepreneurial guy and a father "who loved his boys more than life," his sister said. A Portland native, he played football in high school and wasn't a fan of the 9-to-5 job, she said, so he started a recycling business.

He had various scrapes with the law -- from unpaid traffic violations to marijuana charges -- and, at times, a turbulent relationship with the mother of his children, now about 9 and 13, court records show.

But "to know him was to love him," his sister said. "He was definitely a unique individual who left his mark on a lot of lives."

His body was found early on Aug. 5, 2001, on a grassy spot along the street near Seattle's Kubota Garden. He'd been shot once in the back of the head. A "blunt" -- a cigar filled with marijuana and rerolled -- lay a few feet from his right hand.

Police began investigating where Sanders had been the night before and sent evidence -- the fatal bullet, the blunt and Sanders' hat -- for testing. A year without any suspects passed before they got their first big break: State scientists said DNA found on the blunt matched Glover.

Detectives pored over murky surveillance tapes from Skyway Bowl and Casino, where Sanders spent his last night alive, and eventually determined that Sanders left in a white Cadillac with Glover and his friend, David Peterson.

Police also learned that Glover was in prison for shooting another man in the face just three weeks after Sanders was killed. They dug up the old evidence, had the gun tested and concluded it was the same gun that ended Sanders' life.

Then in 2004, Peterson, sitting in the King County Jail for an unrelated killing, claimed he had information about Sanders' slaying.

After unsuccessfully trying to swap the information for a lighter sentence, Peterson told police he was with Sanders and Glover that night, according to prosecutors. He said they pulled over so Glover and Sanders could urinate, and suddenly, without explanation, Glover walked around the car and fired at Sanders' head.

On July 3, 2006, prosecutors charged Glover -- a man with a long criminal record and "die" tattooed on his stomach -- with murder.

Sanders' sister remembers the feeling of relief: Finally, there would be justice.

From witness to suspect

Over the next year and a half, the case started to disintegrate. Evidence that Glover used the same gun to shoot another man, Frank Brown, was weaker than it originally seemed for a list of reasons that began to emerge.

Brown had identified Glover as his shooter only after four days had passed, and he subsequently refused to cooperate with police. The bullet that struck him -- potential evidence in the Sanders' case -- had been destroyed.

Investigators still had the gun, so they retested a fingerprint found on a round loaded inside it. Not only wasn't it Glover's, it matched a man who didn't seem to be connected to either shooting, Barber said.

Raising more doubts, Glover's attorneys got hold of a note that his previous lawyer had written to him. It suggested he had no choice but to plead guilty.

Added up, the evidence problems meant Glover might be able to convince a jury he didn't actually shoot Brown, leaving prosecutors unable to prove he ever had the gun used to kill Sanders.

The DNA, by itself, didn't prove much. Maybe Glover rolled the blunt, sealing it with spit and leaving his DNA. Maybe he gave it to Sanders. It doesn't show that he killed him, or that he was even there when Sanders died.

But the worst blow to the prosecutors' case was a revelation about the man who claimed he saw the deadly shooting.

Prosecutors always knew having Peterson testify could be risky. He shot a Seattle man to death in October 2001, and, two months later, wounded a police sergeant in Kansas. He was serving a life prison term under the "Three Strikes" law.

Investigators thought a twinge of conscience made him come forward in Sanders' death. After all, he wasn't a suspect himself, and he didn't seem to have anything to gain by ratting out his friend.

Then, prosecutors say, they found out he was a liar.

Peterson had testified before, in a 1987 murder case. He told a jury he saw two teenagers attack a man on the street. They were convicted of aggravated murder.

Investigators recently learned that a few years ago, in a detailed interview with a lawyer for one of the convicted men, Peterson claimed his testimony was one big lie.

He would be useless in the case against Glover, Barber said, because what jury would believe him now?

Worse, Peterson -- known as "D.P." -- may have had his own reasons to commit murder: Sanders may have angered him over a woman that night, according to Barber, who said he could not elaborate.

And he may have had reasons to pin the crime on Glover. He was trying to get favorable treatment in prison, and investigators also suspect he may have thought that testifying in court would give him a chance to escape, Barber said.

"It's every bit as likely that D.P. did this as Conjewel," the deputy prosecutor said.

The case remains open.

'Truth' proves elusive

Through his attorneys, Glover declined to discuss the case. Peterson could not be reached for comment in the Kansas prison system, where his phone calls are limited.

Glover already was behind bars for Brown's shooting and would have been freed Dec. 24. Instead, he stayed in the King County Jail for Sanders' death until Feb. 8.

His attorneys said he has reunited with his family, including four children, and "is doing well in the community."

The lawyers, who said they spent hundreds of hours working on the case, would not discuss Glover's version of events on the night of the shooting.

They simply noted that "for a variety of reasons, the state's sole witness lacked credibility" and that "certain forensic evidence associated with the case turned out to be less reliable than it initially appeared."

Sanders' sister, who lives on the East Coast, said she'd been looking forward to coming to Seattle to see Glover get sent to prison. That won't happen, at least not for now. She understands why he is walking around a free man. She doesn't blame prosecutors or police; she praised lead detective Natale Gasperetti and all the effort he's put into solving the crime.

But none of that makes it any easier. She said she would like to see Glover pay for her brother's death even if Peterson did it, because she believes "they both played a big enough role in what happened.

"Do I want the truth? Yes. Am I ever going to get it, realistically? No," she said. "I just need this to be over."